


Triage

by Imkerin



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: 'Thank God We're Alive' Sex, F/M, First Time, Post Battle for Mt Hyjal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:33:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6573742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thrall and Jaina share a meal and a room after Archimonde's defeat at Mt Hyjal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jaoughale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaoughale/gifts).



It’s still strange even after these last few desperate days, Jaina thinks, to watch all of them working together: the orcs and the strange, hulking Tauren shamans side by side with priests of the Light -- and of Elune, now, too. She drags up a tired smile for one of the latter, who stops by Jaina’s bit of gnarled root-slash-backrest with a look of concern. “I’m fine, really,” she says, because she is: not badly wounded enough to require healing; exhausted and drained after the long battle, maybe, but who isn’t? Everyone had done their share in equal measure, and many of the others had paid with their lives and more. “Thank you.”

The priestess smiles back, her sharp, long features going friendly, almost sisterly. _“Shaha lor’ma,”_ she says, and fumbles briefly in the pale leather pouch tied around her waist, handing Jaina a small but surprisingly heavy package wrapped in leaves. _“Elune-adore.”_

 _“Elune-adore,”_ Jaina echoes as the priestess hurries off to rejoin the other healers moving among the wounded. She doesn’t know, hasn’t had the chance or the time, to learn as much Darnassian as she’d like, but there are startling similarities to Thalassian; they leave an ache of older loss on top of today’s fresh ones, but make this new alliance feel like a true second chance.

Turning her thoughts back to the present, she unfolds the leaf to reveal a thick, dense flatbread with a slice of pale cheese and realizes, with a sudden half-laugh at the sheer mundanity of it, that she’s starving. She hasn’t had time for anything but a snatched mouthful of water here and there since early in the morning, and bread and cheese suddenly seems like a full feast. Breaking off a corner, she pops it in her mouth and closes her eyes to appreciate the taste. It’s not like the waybread she knows from home or even the magebread she’s made so much of over the past months; the grain itself is different, thicker and maltier. The cheese is surprisingly, bitingly sharp, but it cuts through the richness of the bread so perfectly that she can’t help but make a small pleased noise.

“It looks good,” a deep voice says.

Jaina’s eyes pop open in startled embarrassment. She looks up -- and _up_ \-- at Thrall, towering above her, and feels herself blush awfully. “It is,” she says.

“May I share your root?” At her nod, he lowers himself slowly to the ground beside her with a slight wince, followed by a deep sigh. “Thank you.”

This much closer, she can see the exhausted lines in his face, the slight slump of his broad shoulders. He looks awful: at least as awful as she feels. “Here,” she says impulsively, tearing the bread and cheese in half and passing it to him. “This might help a little. One of the night elves just gave it to me.”

The bit of bread looks comically small in his big hands, but he takes it gravely with a nod. It feels somehow right to break bread with him like this over a victory, like something snapping together that wasn’t quite set before. Brushing away the thought, Jaina stuffs the rest of her half into her mouth to free her hands and calls on the last of her reserves to conjure a bottle of water. She takes a long drink, washing down the bread and some of the ash and ache in her throat from a day’s constant casting, and then passes it to Thrall.

“Thank you,” he says again after he drinks, his gaze heavy on her. “For everything. I don’t think we could have survived this day without your portals and your strength.”

It’s a little odd to hear an orc three times her size compliment her _strength,_ but somehow Jaina knows he means it, every word and everything under the words. An unexpected warmth rushes through her; she reaches out and touches his arm. “We wouldn’t have even gotten here without you and yours,” she says. “And your willingness to _listen.”_

Maybe she shouldn’t have added that last -- she’ll blame it on the exhaustion, if it was a little snippy -- but it startles a deep, rumbling laugh out of Thrall that sounds so genuine that Jaina can’t help smiling too.

 

By the time they’ve drained the bottle of water, the triage is slowing, the healers consulting with each other and walking between patients with less urgency; it doesn’t take long for someone to notice them again and shoo them both off out of the open air and into one of the lodges: an orc, this time, with a comment that Jaina can’t understand but that pulls another of those disarmingly bright smiles from Thrall. 

Of course, Hyjal was never meant to hold so many visitors at once; even with all of the casualties, and many of the orcs and tauren preferring to sleep in their own camps rather than in treehouses, room is scarce and beds are shared: with no exceptions for rank or stature, it seems.

“You’re still injured,” she says, as Thrall works at the buckles of his armor, his large frame awkwardly crammed into one corner of the small room. She might not have ever worn the stuff herself, but she knows very well from long experience with -- other people -- how awful it is to get out of it all, plate or leather, when you have so much as a bad bruise in the wrong place. “Let me help.”

“Ah -- it’s nothing,” Thrall says, half-raising his hands, but when she brushes past him and starts to work, a little of the stiffness melts out of him. One piece of leather joins another on the floor as she works through it, revealing a rather bloodstained and tattered blue linen shirt beneath it all. “I seem to be constantly thanking you today, with no way to repay you,” he mutters when she’s stepped back again to push the pieces of armor to the side as much as possible.

It’s true that she hardly needs paying back in kind; physically, thanks to her shields, she’s uninjured, but even if she hadn’t been -- her breath catches in her throat, and she can hear him turn to her, instantly on alert. “Jaina?” he says warily.

There’s no way to explain this in words; she can barely make sense of it herself, but it’s _true;_ she can feel the truth of it singing through her the same way she had known absolutely that the Prophet had been speaking truth: the thought of Thrall undressing her sets her blood on fire, lights sudden, dragonfire-bright embers in her stomach that had been cold and sleeping all through these months of war. His huge strong hands on her skin -- his kind blue eyes seeing all of her -- his heavy body, bare for her, full of life despite everything they’ve gone through --

Jaina knows what it is to be reckless, and she knows how much trouble _being_ reckless inevitably leads to, and she for once, with all of her heart, _doesn’t care._ “But you could repay me,” she says, her voice stunningly calm in her own ears.

There’s a confused silence behind her. “What?” Thrall says hesitantly a few moments later.

Jaina doesn’t turn, because if she looks at him she might see sense -- not because he’s an orc, but if she looks and sees he doesn’t want her, doesn’t want this from a human, or from her -- “I think the clasp on my cloak is stuck.” 

It isn’t.

Thrall’s footsteps are quiet, but they thunder in her ears. Tentatively, he reaches around her shoulders, filling her peripheral vision with green and blue, and unpins the delicate silver clasp before lifting the heavy wool away. “My shoulderguards,” she says, before he can say anything more. “There’s a strap--”

He finds it before she can finish speaking, undoing the buckle and lifting them away. He’s so close behind her she can feel the warmth of his body, so much bigger than any other man she’s been with, but it only stokes the sudden fire in her more. “My bracers.” She holds her wrist to the side; he takes her arms gently in his hands as he undoes each one and sets them aside as well, though she feels the tiniest of trembles in his fingertips. “My shirt.”

“Jaina...”

She doesn’t say anything; what more is there to say? In a few more silent moments his hands gently move from her wrists up along her arms, unhooking the small eye catch at the nape of her neck, then helping her lift it up and off. 

The mountain air is cool on the flush of her newly-exposed skin, but her nipples have been already stiff for long minutes. “Thrall -- this isn’t actually about payment,” she says suddenly. “Not for me.” There might be some kind of philosophical line of argument about lifedebt to the Light -- or the spirits -- or whatever, or whoever -- but it and everything else can wait, for once, just for this one night.

“Nor for me.” His hands settle on her shoulders again, fingers long enough that his blunt, hard fingertips brush the roots of her breasts. The worn linen of his shirt is so rough against her back. “Jaina, are you certain?”

“I always am,” she says, and it’s only half a lie. Despite the weight of his hands, his grip is light enough that she can easily turn to face him, putting her hands on his chest and pushing him back the few short steps to the bed; he goes willingly, easily.

 

The bed is narrow -- no doubt meant for an elf far taller and slimmer than either of them -- but they manage, with Thrall flat on his back taking up most of the space by himself. Jaina slides out of her trousers and boots, then hesitates briefly with her fingertips under the waistband of her panties before stripping them off as well, standing naked over him.

He props himself up on his elbows to look better -- and he does look, head to toe, his gaze like a physical touch sending shivers sweeping over her. “You’re very beautiful,” he says, oddly solemn, oddly wistful -- but his lips quirk up around his fangs in a shy, earnest smile when she says, “Thank you.”

 

No matter how badly she wants him and how slowly she goes, he’s so big that the stretch of taking him into her hurts, an ache that takes her breath away, opening her wider than she’s ever been. His hands are locked around her hips, holding her steady; she can see the pleasure flooding his face, the desire, the hunger to move -- not so different than any other man, despite the fangs -- but he says, “Are you all right?”

She means to say yes, she’s fine, she wants it, but he slips half an inch further in and the words come out a gasping, incoherent moan, her fingers digging into her thighs, her eyes sliding closed. He’s so deep, she’s so full, it feels so good and so much. “Light,” she gasps, and _“Oh--”_

He pries her hands away from her thighs and sets them on his stomach, his palms stroking gently over the aching spots in her legs, soothing away the beginnings of bruises with a tiny swell of magic that smells somehow simultaneously like the swelling sea and soft green growing things. “Let me take care of you now,” he says. His voice is deep enough to be a growl, but there’s so much more in it that she says _yes_ and _please_ without thinking because she wants it, she wants everything he has to offer: his body, his magic, foreign though it is, and not least the chance to let go.

His hands slide under her thighs again, supporting her weight easily, and she relaxes, lets him hold her, lets him lower her slowly down all the rest of the way until she’s straddling him, all of him inside her, the tiny waves of his magic lapping at her and leeching away the soreness until only the memory of the ache remains. Then he fucks her, driving up into her body with slow, even strokes that she meets entirely instinctively, and it’s all somehow so intense that it finally, finally flushes the last lingering thoughts of the outside world and all the troubles still waiting for them from her head entirely. 

She comes, gasping, clenching around him until he _does_ growl, and the instant she has her breath back drives herself down harder onto him, riding him to another climax and another, scratching marks into the bright green skin of his stomach and hips that stay there, shockingly dark and obvious, despite the faint pulse of healing she can still feel leeching into her through his hands.

“Jaina,” he says, groaning as she twists her hips, “We have to stop-- I can’t--”

They can’t, it’s true; it’s a reality she didn’t want to face, one of the many she hadn’t _had_ to for the last few Light-blessed moments; she could kiss him for that. And -- why not? She leans forward, slipping up off his cock and out of his grasp with a little gasp at the sudden hollow loss, and just -- kisses him. The fangs aren’t as difficult to manage as she’d imagined; less so than the way he shudders under her, the now-unrestrained buck of his hips shaking the bed like an earthquake as his come spatters thick and hot up along the back of her thigh.

After his face clears of the dazed pleasure, Jaina kisses him again, savoring the little startled look that comes to his eyes, a look that holds nothing of regret. “Don’t say thank you, now,” she says, smiling.

He smiles, too, raising one thick eyebrow; it’s a little shy, still, despite what they’ve just done, and more than a little endearing. “I -- don’t know what I should say.”

“Why don’t we try ‘good night,’” Jaina says, reaching for the thick shadowcat pelt fallen down by the side of the bed and tugging it upwards.

Thrall pulls it the rest of the way easily, shifting over slightly so that she has room to settle down next to him, warm against his side. “Then good night, Miss Proudmoore.”


End file.
